ATLANTA – Mental health concerns and burnout would lead one in three Georgians to quit their jobs, according to a new report released by Georgia CEO and goBeyondProfit.
Georgia CEO is a network of local business-focused websites. goBeyondProfit is a Georgia alliance of business leaders committed to corporate generosity.
The two organizations have teamed for the past four years to survey Georgians about generosity at work. This year, the team surveyed more than 500 employed Georgians using an opt-in survey. Separately, they surveyed around 200 company executives in Georgia.
Georgia employees ranked compensation as the top reason they would leave their company with mental health a close second. Thirty-five percent of the workers surveyed said lack of mental health support and burnout would cause them to quit.
“Mental health support plays a major role in why employees are leaving and what will help them stay,” the report notes.
Mental health support is particularly important to workers under age 35 and to women, the survey showed.
There appears to be a disconnect between employees and executives on the role of mental health in the workplace.
“Mental health support did not show up in executives’ top four choices for how best to demonstrate generosity toward employees,” the report states. “If executives focus entirely on employees’ top request – compensation – without tuning into these underlying health and wellness issues, turnover will likely continue.”
“Whether you, as an employer… want to engage on this issue or not, really, you’re not going to have a choice,” added Shane Jackson, a co-founder of goBeyondProfit and president of Alpharetta-based Jackson Healthcare.
There were 11.4 million job openings in the United States at the end of April, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Jackson said employers should think about increasing flexibility, even for workers in low-wage jobs that traditionally have not been as flexible as white-collar roles.
“I think what people are looking for is someone to actually engage with them as a human being, understand what their needs are, and how they can – within the limits of a certain job – how they can provide that flexibility,” Jackson said.
Jackson gave the example of an employee not showing up for a shift. He said employers should try to understand the underlying reason and show compassion rather than punish or fire the worker.
Jackson said his medical staffing company, which is one of the largest mental health professional providers in the country, is – like everyone else – facing difficulties finding mental health workers to meet the need.
The survey showed that workers tend to trust their companies, which provides employers with an opportunity to help address employee mental health concerns.
“Employers, businesses, companies have a role to play,” Jackson said. “Because the people you work with every day are either struggling with mental health issues, or they are close to someone [who is] … it is endemic and so you have to be prepared for how you’re going to engage.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation
Monkeypox rash (photo credit: Georgia Department of Public Health/CDC)
ATLANTA – Fewer than 10 children in Georgia have been diagnosed with pediatric hepatitis, State Epidemiologist Cherie L. Drenzek said at the state Board of Public Health’s (DPH) monthly meeting Tuesday.
The pediatric hepatitis outbreak began in Alabama in October 2021.
So, far 245 children in the United States have had the mysterious disease. Most needed to be hospitalized and nine have died.
It’s unclear what causes the disease. None of the children diagnosed so far had hepatitis viruses, but 45% did test positive for adenovirus type 41, a common childhood infection that is usually mild and causes gastrointestinal upset.
“[The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] is casting a really wide net to look at what potentially could be involved, other cofactors, previous infections,” Drenzek said.
Some staff members at Atlanta children’s hospitals are helping with the studies, Drenzek added.
Prior to this outbreak, public health officials did not closely track hepatitis in children, so it’s hard to determine whether the recently identified cases are much higher than typical rates, Drenzek said.
She emphasized that the disease remains very rare.
Monkeypox
Two Georgians have been diagnosed with monkeypox, Drenzek said. The Department of Public Health confirmed the first Georgia case earlier this month.
Drenzek said most of the approximately 65 known monkeypox cases in the United States have been among adult males between 23 and 76 years old, with a median age of 38.
The cases appear to have been transmitted through very close personal contact with someone else who had the lesions, Drenzek said.
Often the monkeypox infections have been found in people also infected with chlamydia, HPV, or syphilis and many of the people with the disease identify themselves as men who have sex with men, Drenzek said.
Most of the people with diagnosed cases had traveled recently – but not to the western and central African regions where monkeypox is endemic
People diagnosed with monkeypox in the current outbreak are not reporting the initial fever and gland swelling usually experienced at the start of the infection.
The rash also differs from that seen in typical monkeypox cases, with fewer lesions that are less pronounced than those usually seen. In the current outbreak, the rash often begins in the genital and perianal region and the disease tends to progress more rapidly than in usual cases.
COVID-19
Reported COVID-19 numbers in Georgia have increased about 20% in the last week. Hospitalization and death numbers have also increased slightly, Drenzek said.
Those numbers are likely an undercount because many people are testing at home and not reporting the results to public health agencies, she added.
Drenzek said the rates of infection in what she called the “sixth wave” of the virus are nowhere near what they were during the height of the pandemic.
More waves of COVID are expected this year, Drenzek said. She encouraged people to get vaccinated and boosted and to remain careful.
Infant formula
Sean Mack, the state’s WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program coordinator, provided an update on the infant formula shortage that began earlier this year when manufacturer Abbott recalled its infant formulas and shut down one of its formula factories.
Though Georgia’s WIC program did not have a contract with Abbott, the state’s supply of formula has also been impacted by the nationwide shortage. Georgia’s WIC program has loosened restrictions to allow participants to purchase different brands of formula, not just the Mead Johnson formula that is typically the only one allowed.
It has also loosened rules that prevented the return of formula to community food programs so that other families can use the precious formula.
Around half of infants born in Georgia rely on the WIC program for formula, Mack said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia is seeking input from individuals and organizations about what it should look for when it awards new multibillion-dollar contracts for the state’s Medicaid program.
The Georgia Department of Community Health’s request for information is the first step in the process of awarding the new health care contracts, which are expected to take effect by July 1, 2024.
Georgia’s Medicaid program contracts with private health insurers to provide health care services to around 1.7 million Georgians, most of them low-income children and pregnant women. The contracts are worth more than $4 billion annually.
Georgia is looking at five priority areas when deciding on the new contract holders: health-care quality, equity, access and outcomes, value, and coverage and services.
The request asks individuals, organizations, and companies to share feedback about the current program’s strengths and weaknesses and suggestions for improving outcomes, respecting linguistic and cultural needs, serving rural Georgia, and many other topics.
Responses are due by 2 p.m. June 24.. Individuals and organizations should email their responses to [email protected].
Under the Medicaid managed care system, states pay companies a per-member, per-month rate to provide health care to members. The contracts are highly sought after by insurance providers.
“The business of Medicaid managed care involves billions of dollars, so the stakes are very high in the competition for contracts with state Medicaid agencies,” according to a 2020 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) report.
Companies that lose out on state contracts frequently sue, claiming violations of procurement rules and demanding do-overs of the process. Such protests prompted three rounds of rebidding in Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
The contracting process presents states with a unique opportunity to implement policy changes and improve outcomes, according to the RWJF report.
The new mental health bill also requires DCH to evaluate whether mental and physical health are being treated equally, track complaints about suspected violations of mental health “parity,” and publish information about the findings.
Gov. Brian Kemp has signed another bill lawmakers passed this year that will require DCH to post more financial data about Medicaid payments, spending, and numbers of primary care providers. That law takes effect July 1.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Georgia’s Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission met in Atlanta on Thursday
ATLANTA – Georgia is starting “the decade of mental health reforms” Kevin Tanner, chairman of the state’s Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission, said this week.
The high-level commission, formed in 2019, developed long-range recommendations to address the state’s abysmal mental health outcomes. The General Assembly adopted some of those recommendations during the 2022 legislative session.
The commission met Thursday to check in on the progress of the reforms and plan for the next legislative session.
“This is one of the best budget and policy years the agency has seen in many, many years,” said Caylee Noggle, commissioner of the state Department of Community Health (DCH), which administers Georgia Medicaid and the State Health Benefit Plan covering teachers and state employees.
Commission members identified mental health pay rates and workforce shortages, care coordination, and helping people with mental illness avoid the criminal justice system as key priorities for the next round of reforms.
Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, said she is concerned that Georgia’s relatively low payment rates for inpatient psychiatric treatment contribute to a shortage of treatment options for Georgians.
Some Georgia mental health placement beds are filled by people from other states, who are sent here because of Georgia’s low rates, Oliver said.
“There’s still a big gap there,” Noggle acknowledged.
The new mental health services bill requires DCH to study and report on Georgia’s reimbursement rates by the end of this year.
Oliver said she would be closely watching the results of that rate study. She urged Noggle to use her role to ensure the rates are increased.
“It starts with you,” Oliver told Noggle. “It’s a pretty high priority in my mind.”
The lack of treatment options is reflected in the number of children with mental health complaints who repeatedly visit emergency rooms at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) hospitals, said Dr. Daniel Salinas, chief of community clinical integration for the hospital system.
Salinas said many of the children who repeatedly come to CHOA emergency rooms with serious mental health complaints had been in state custody and/or had histories of physical or sexual abuse.
Salinas said there’s a lack of “robust coordination” of mental health treatment plans for children.
Salinas said CHOA has set aside $170 million to develop mental health services over the next five years. The hospital system recently started an outpatient referral center and is piloting a program in which mental health services are integrated into a primary care center.
Oliver said she is particularly concerned about a subset of children in state custody who do not have placements with families or group homes and are instead living in hotels.
On the criminal justice front, Tanner said the issue of transportation to mental health services for people who are picked up by law enforcement came up frequently during last year’s discussions.
A subcommittee chaired by Georgia Supreme Court Presiding Justice Michael Boggs will study how many such rides are needed and what they cost, Tanner said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – For the third year in a row, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has granted Georgia permission to change how it tracks school performance in response to the pandemic.
In the first two years of the pandemic, the federal agency allowed states a great deal of flexibility in how they measured school performance.
This school year, Georgia again applied for and received permission for exceptions in how it reports the data, according to a letter from the DOE to State School Superintendent Richard Woods dated May 26.
Georgia will not assign overall scores or letter grades for schools and districts as it did before the pandemic.
Those grades were calculated using a combination of factors such as content mastery, progress, readiness, and, for high schools, graduation rates.
Collecting such data helps families evaluate school performance and hold schools accountable. The data for each school is published on the Georgia School Grades Report website.
Georgia also uses this data to determine which schools need special attention and support.
The state will still collect and publish data on how schools perform on individual indicators, such as reading, math, social studies, and science.
“The purpose is to focus on the information in each indicator and to avoid consolidating complex information into an oversimplified numerical score,” according to a presentation on Georgia’s Department of Education website.
Data on student attendance, college and career readiness, and closing achievement gaps between different groups of students also will not be reported.
The state is revamping how it evaluates progress. Going forward, rather than evaluate school improvement based on a pre-pandemic baseline, Georgia will use 2022 data as a baseline.
“Our goal is to establish a new baseline rather than compare your school’s performance to pre-pandemic norms,” the state Department of Education presentation says.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
